Open Mic Sessions

Friday & Saturday - Lunch & Dinner

Bring your instruments, practice your favorite song and get up on stage to perform during one of our open mic sessions! Hosted by Bob Cat of Local Farmers Union these sessions are sure to be a good time for everyone. Sign ups will take place on-site.

The Russet Trio

The Russet Trio

Friday & Saturday 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Based in New York’s Hudson Valley, the Russet Trio plays a wide array of traditional string band music. Formed in 2003 in Columbia County, the trio has become a highly sought after ensemble throughout the Northeast and beyond for contra and square dances, weddings, festivals and parties. Their music blends traditional Celtic and Appalachian music with syncopation and groove. However one attempts to describe this music, people’s feet will move and their spirits soar.

Fern Bradley

Contra Dance with Fern Bradley & The Russet Trio

Saturday 8:30 pm – 11:00 pm

Caller Fern Bradley, also a Hudson Valley favorite, specializes in teaching lively, easy and fun dances that participants of all ages can enjoy together. On Saturday night, she will be joining The Russet Trio for the contra dance. They make a great combination that new or experienced dancers won’t want to miss!

L.A. Sound Productions

Friday 8:30 pm - 11:00 pm

DJ Lloyd Church will provide a wide selection of music and is sure to be a crowd pleaser. Have a request? Emailconference@nofany.organd let us know!

Film Screenings

Friday 8:30 pm - 11:00 pm

Not in the mood for dancing? We will also be screening the following films: Kombit: The Cooperative; SEED: The Untold Story; Under Contract: Farmers and the Fine Print; and Our Farms, Our Stories.

Family Swim Time

Friday 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

While the on-site pool at the Saratoga Hilton is open every day, we have set up a designated time to take a dip. All children must be accompanied by an adult.

Book Signings

Elizabeth Henderson

Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture

To an increasing number of American families the CSA (community supported agriculture) is the answer to the globalization of our food supply. The premise is simple: create a partnership between local farmers and nearby consumers, who become members or subscribers in support of the farm. In exchange for paying in advance—at the beginning of the growing season, when the farm needs financing—CSA members receive the freshest, healthiest produce throughout the season and keep money, jobs, and farms in their own community.

In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a Chelsea Green classic, authors Henderson and Van En provide new insight into making CSA not only a viable economic model, but the right choice for food lovers and farmers alike. Thinking and buying local is quickly moving from a novel idea to a mainstream activity. The groundbreaking first edition helped spark a movement and, with this revised edition, Sharing the Harvest is poised to lead the way toward a revitalized agriculture.

Rachel Mamane

Stocks and broths are the foundation of good cooking, yet information on their use is often relegated to the introductions or appendices of cookbooks. Until now there has not been a comprehensive culinary guide to stocks in the canon, save for snippets here and there. Hard to believe, since most passionate home cooks and professional chefs know that using stocks and broths—both on their own and as the base for a recipe—can turn a moderately flavorful dish into a masterpiece. Mastering Stocks and Broths is the comprehensive guide to culinary stocks and broths that passionate home cooks and innovative chefs have all been waiting for.

Rachael Mamane, a self-taught cook and owner of small-scale broth company Brooklyn Bouillon, is reminiscent of M. F. K. Fisher, Patience Gray, and Julia Child. She takes us on a culinary journey into the science behind fundamental stocks and the truth about well-crafted bone broths, and offers over 100 complex and unique recipes incorporating stocks as foundational ingredients. Mastering Stocks and Broths includes a historical culinary narrative about stocks in the classic French technique as well as through the lens of other cultures around the world. Readers will learn about the importance of quality sourcing, the practical and health benefits of stocks and broths, and detailed methodology on how to develop, store, and use them in a home kitchen.

The recipes place a playful emphasis on the value of zero waste, turning spent bones, produce seconds, and leftover animal fats into practical products to use around the home. Readers will turn to this book when they find themselves wondering what to do with the carcass of a store-bought roast chicken and they want to learn how to make every inch of their vegetables go further.

Perhaps most important to remember: a good stock takes time. This is part of the pleasure—making stocks is meditative and meaningful, if you allow yourself the occasion. Building a stock often happens in the background of most kitchens—a smell that permeates a residence, a gentle warmth that radiates from the kitchen. Readers will be inspired by Mamane’s approach to truly slow cookery and her effervescent love for food itself.

Jeffrey Roberts

Salted and Cured: Savoring the Culture, Heritage, and Flavor of America’s Preserved Meats

From country ham to coppa, bacon to bresaola. Prosciutto. Andouille. Country ham. The extraordinary rise in popularity of cured meats in recent years often overlooks the fact that the ancient practice of meat preservation through the use of salt, time, and smoke began as a survival technique. All over the world, various cultures developed ways to extend the viability of the hunt—and later the harvest—according to their unique climates and environments, resulting in the astonishing diversity of preserved meats that we celebrate and enjoy today everywhere from corner delis to white-tablecloth restaurants.

In Salted and Cured, author Jeffrey P. Roberts traces the origins of today’s American charcuterie, salumi, and other delights, and connects them to a current renaissance that begins to rival those of artisan cheese and craft beer. In doing so, Roberts highlights the incredible stories of immigrant butchers, breeders, chefs, entrepreneurs, and other craftspeople who withstood the modern era’s push for bland, industrial food to produce not only delicious but culturally significant cured meats.

By rejecting the industry-led push for “the other white meat” and reinvigorating the breeding and production of heritage hog breeds while finding novel ways to utilize the entire animal—snout to tail—today’s charcutiers and salumieri not only produce everything from country ham to violino di capra but create more sustainable businesses for farmers and chefs.

Weaving together agriculture, animal welfare and health, food safety and science, economics, history, a deep sense of place, and amazing preserved foods, Salted and Cured is a literary feast, a celebration of both innovation and time-honored knowledge, and an expertly guided tour of America’s culinary treasures, both old and new.

Lee Reich

Grow Fruit Naturally

This book is for you if you want to enjoy the luscious rewards of home-grown fruits, whether your home is a sunny balcony, a quarter-acre suburban lot, or a five-acre farmden. With home-grown fruits, you get to choose varieties that tickle your palate, not necessarily those that sell well and can withstand the rigors of shipping and please the palate of somebody in Pasadena, in Pensacola, or in Portland. For the localvore, what could be more local than ripe peaches or blueberries harvested a few steps from the back or front door?

This book shows how growing fruit can be both enjoyable and easy, especially if you begin by selecting appropriate types and varieties for your climate and site. The emphasis is on growing fruit naturally. Naturally grown fruits develop high flavor, are rich in nutrients and other healthful components, and naturally resist pests and diseases so don't require toxic sprays. The emphasis here is also on simplicity, making growing everything from apples to figs to oranges to strawberries—over 30 different kinds of fruits in all—feasible within today's constraints of time and space.

Keynote Speakers: David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé

The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health

A riveting exploration of how microbes are transforming the way we see nature and ourselves—and could revolutionize agriculture and medicine.

Prepare to set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. Good health—for people and for plants—depends on Earth’s smallest creatures. The Hidden Half of Nature tells the story of our tangled relationship with microbes and their potential to revolutionize agriculture and medicine, from garden to gut.

When David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé decide to restore life into their barren yard by creating a garden, dead dirt threatens their dream. As a cure, they feed their soil a steady diet of organic matter. The results impress them. In short order, the much-maligned microbes transform their bleak yard into a flourishing Eden. Beneath their feet, beneficial microbes and plant roots continuously exchange a vast array of essential compounds. The authors soon learn that this miniaturized commerce is central to botanical life’s master strategy for defense and health.

They are abruptly plunged further into investigating microbes when Biklé is diagnosed with cancer. Here, they discover an unsettling truth. An armada of bacteria (our microbiome) sails the seas of our gut, enabling our immune system to sort microbial friends from foes. But when our gut microbiome goes awry, our health can go with it. The authors also discover startling insights into the similarities between plant roots and the human gut. We are not what we eat. We are all—for better or worse—the product of what our microbes eat.

This leads to a radical reconceptualization of our relationship to the natural world: by cultivating beneficial microbes, we can rebuild soil fertility and help turn back the modern plague of chronic diseases. The Hidden Half of Nature reveals how to transform agriculture and medicine—by merging the mind of an ecologist with the care of a gardener and the skill of a doctor.